Shutter Island - 8.5/10 - Awesome movie. I accidentally read some spoilers beforehand, so I knew a little bit about the twist, but not all of the details so it was still somewhat surprising. Regardless, it was very enjoyable.

thedude wrote:Primer- 8/10: Wow. Very interesting movie. Confusing at times, but interesting. Quick summary: engineers accidentally build a time machine and try to change the world for the better, but do not fully understand what they are doing (or maybe have done? or maybe will?).

I saw this a few weeks ago. I completely agree with your analysis...very good movie. Hard to believe it was completed on a $7,000 budget. It never looked cheap.

"Don't take anything for granted, because tomorrow is not promised to any of us." ---Kirby Puckett

thedude wrote:Primer- 8/10: Wow. Very interesting movie. Confusing at times, but interesting. Quick summary: engineers accidentally build a time machine and try to change the world for the better, but do not fully understand what they are doing (or maybe have done? or maybe will?).

I saw this a few weeks ago. I completely agree with your analysis...very good movie. Hard to believe it was completed on a $7,000 budget. It never looked cheap.

i should probably rewatch this at some point...i remember being pretty confused at what the hell was going on

Dan Lambskin wrote:i should probably rewatch this at some point...i remember being pretty confused at what the hell was going on

I think it's meant to be somewhat confusing. Not many people are going to be able to understand the technical dialog (I certainly couldn't).

I read some reviews to see how others reacted to the movie. I think Roger Ebert explains it well:

Not really spoilers, but some of the basic plot is revealed:"Primer" is a puzzle film that will leave you wondering about paradoxes, loopholes, loose ends, events without explanation, chronologies that don't seem to fit. Abe and Aaron wonder, too, and what seems at first like a perfectly straightforward method for using the machine turns out to be alarmingly complicated; various generations of themselves and their actions prove impossible to keep straight. Carruth handles the problems in an admirably understated way; when one of the characters begins to bleed a little from an ear, what does that mean? Will he be injured in a past he has not yet visited? In that case, is he the double? What happened to the being who arrived at this moment the old-fashioned way, before having traveled back?

thedude wrote:Primer- 8/10: Wow. Very interesting movie. Confusing at times, but interesting. Quick summary: engineers accidentally build a time machine and try to change the world for the better, but do not fully understand what they are doing (or maybe have done? or maybe will?).

I saw this a few weeks ago. I completely agree with your analysis...very good movie. Hard to believe it was completed on a $7,000 budget. It never looked cheap.

i should probably rewatch this at some point...i remember being pretty confused at what the hell was going on

It was confusing at times, but I remember it all making sense more toward the end. Watch it a couple more times and it will make sense....mostly.

There's a couple pretty good spoiler reviews at imdb, here's a decent one...

Quoted from imdb....Partial explanation Only for those who have seen the movie.

The movie is shown completely linearly from Abe's perspective. (Abe's the blond one.) I'm sure most people can follow the move up until the scene in the garage where Philip and Robert explain to Abe that Rachell's ex boy friend showed up at the Robert's party with a shot gun.

Things get strange at this point because Aaron and Abe are now planning to stop the ex boy friend, an event that from regular time has already happened but we are viewing the movie from Abe's perspective and he hasn't gone to the party yet. Also at the time of the garage scene Abe doesn't yet know that Aaron used the failsafe machine to change the events at the party.

When Abe shows up at the fail safe machine it isn't the one he left running but the one that Arron had taken back in time inside the first fail safe machine. When Abe goes back in time he meets Arron who already knows what Abe was going to say because he's also gone back in time.

Abe knocks his past self out with the NO2 while Arron drugs his own breakfast milk.

At this point they are changing their own past. They don't play the stock market so they aren't rich at the end of the movie.

Aaron's been recording all the conversations that he hears through the ear piece so he's ready the second time that Abe comes to explain that they have built a time machine, only the second time Abe has also come back in time.

We will never know what would have happened at the party if Aaron and Abe hadn't used the time machine to change the events at the party because those events never happen. We do know that Abe tells Rachel's father the venture capitalist about the time machine and he uses it. That's why he has a couple days worth of beard growth.

Aaron goes though the days several times and even meets himself and gets in a fight with himself.

Now all you have to do is watch it another 3 times to confirm what I just wrote.

Quoted from imdb....Partial explanation Only for those who have seen the movie.

The movie is shown completely linearly from Abe's perspective. (Abe's the blond one.) I'm sure most people can follow the move up until the scene in the garage where Philip and Robert explain to Abe that Rachell's ex boy friend showed up at the Robert's party with a shot gun.

Things get strange at this point because Aaron and Abe are now planning to stop the ex boy friend, an event that from regular time has already happened but we are viewing the movie from Abe's perspective and he hasn't gone to the party yet. Also at the time of the garage scene Abe doesn't yet know that Aaron used the failsafe machine to change the events at the party.

When Abe shows up at the fail safe machine it isn't the one he left running but the one that Arron had taken back in time inside the first fail safe machine. When Abe goes back in time he meets Arron who already knows what Abe was going to say because he's also gone back in time.

Abe knocks his past self out with the NO2 while Arron drugs his own breakfast milk.

At this point they are changing their own past. They don't play the stock market so they aren't rich at the end of the movie.

Aaron's been recording all the conversations that he hears through the ear piece so he's ready the second time that Abe comes to explain that they have built a time machine, only the second time Abe has also come back in time.

We will never know what would have happened at the party if Aaron and Abe hadn't used the time machine to change the events at the party because those events never happen. We do know that Abe tells Rachel's father the venture capitalist about the time machine and he uses it. That's why he has a couple days worth of beard growth.

Aaron goes though the days several times and even meets himself and gets in a fight with himself.

Now all you have to do is watch it another 3 times to confirm what I just wrote.

My Understanding is:

First First Abe and Aaron keep trying to change events at the party with the psycho ex boy friend so that they are heroes. They do this several times, but never get things right and keep making the party worse and worse (one time apparently the psycho starts shooting).

Meanwhile (maybe the earliest) Aaron found the fail-safe machine that Abe created and used it to go back in time and bring a couple of machines with him, which he used to go further back in time and record conversations with Abe and manipulate events and manipulate pre-time travel Abe.

At the end Aaron and Abe have time traveled to a time before the machine was ever used. Aaron wants to let events run their course and start over else where. Abe wants to stay near his past self and prevent past-Abe and past-Aaron from ever getting the machine to work in the first place.

I think you are supposed to wonder at the end whether Abe and Aaron have been manipulated to in every action they ever took by some future version of themselves.

"I do not think baseball of today is any better than it was 30 years ago... I still think Radbourne is the greatest of the pitchers." John Sullivan 1914-Old athletes never change.

Pretty much deserved the lowest rating because I couldn't even finish it. The main character was some retarded bomb diffuser who thought he was such a badass that he could do whatever the hell wanted and his badassery would prevent him from ever getting blown up. how am i supposed to root for a guy who is too cool to let a robot go in first and check stuff out, all i could think about is how much of a moron he was. i srsly have never wanted a character to die more. then you combine that with ridiculous predictability (i mean srsly who couldn't call every single death in that movie before it happened) and a scene with three guys wrestling without shirts on for 10 minutes and you have a pretty terrible movie. i cannot understand how it's nominated for an oscar.

This had the potential to be a really really awesome movie, and they blew it.Shooting a movie in bleak colours, and making the audience seasick with fast wild-moving cameras is not slick or cool, it is c-r-a-p, crap. And the ending was like the writers had got bored of writing and said "baddie dies, the end" so they could collect their cash quicker. Lame.